Spy agencies are, by design, bankrolled to spy on allies and enemies abroad. When it comes to domestic spying, however, we run into problems.The latest report, this time via Der Spiegel and based on internal NSA documents, reveals that the NSA, in conjunction with the CIA and FBI, has begun intercepting laptops purchased online in order to install (quite literal) spyware and even hardware on the machines. The NSA terms this “interdiction.” Agents divert shipments to secret warehouses, carefully open the packages, install the software and/or hardware, and send them on their way.The spy agency reportedly has backdoor access to numerous hardware and software systems from prominent tech companies such as Cisco, Dell, and Western Digital, among others. The NSA can even exploit Microsoft Windows error reports to find weak spots in compromised machines in order to install Trojans and other viruses.

Mikko Hypponen, Chief Research Officer of Finnish company, F-Secure, addresses "How much can Google and Facebook attribute to you personally? Who else gets to know it?"

Leaked documents shared by Der Spiegel show that a piece of NSA spyware called DROPOUTJEEP can access pretty much everything on the iPhone.

The US National Security Agency can reportedly sniff out every last bit of data from your iPhone, according to leaked NSA documents published by German magazine Der Spiegel.

Known as DROPOUTJEEP, the spyware is said to be one of the tools employed by the NSA's ANT (Advanced or Access Network Technology) division to gain backdoor access to various electronic devices. On Sunday, leaked documents obtained by Der Spiegel showed how these tools have reportedly been used to infiltrate computers, hard drives, routers, and other devices from tech companies such as Cisco, Dell, Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor, and Samsung.

Those same documents reveal how DROPOUTJEEP can infiltrate virtually all areas of the iPhone, including voice mail, contact lists, instant messages, and cell tower location. The tool's abilities are revealed in the following description from one of the apparently leaked NSA documents published by Der Spiegel.

San Francisco Chronicle journalist, Seth Rosenfeld, spent years fighting to get information in government records (supposed to be available under the Freedom of Information Act or "FOIA") for the book "Subversives" he was writing.

When the Society for Professional Journalists honored him this summer, Mr. Rosenfeld expressed dismay that President Obama's administration has not upheld his pledges to support the FOIA - "that the Justice Dept. and the FBI have, in fact, continued certain policies that are contrary to the FOIA and which undermine public accountability and transparency."

(At this end-of-year, you are encouraged to please sustain Democracy Broadcasting News' efforts to capture and provide you (and the public), original video perspectives that mainstream media omits. Will you please donate (via the website) to continue and expand this work? If so, thank you).

20131229

Gaddafi may have commissioned attack that killed 270 people 25 years ago, ex-Israeli security official tells Times of Israel, but Ahmed Jibril’s PFLP-GC carried it out, writes David Horovitz December 19, 2013

Twenty-five years after Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, with the loss of all 259 passengers and crew and 11 people on the ground, a former senior member of the Israeli security establishment said he was certain the bombing was carried out by Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.The Israeli source, who spoke to The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity, said Israel was “listening in” during the months prior to the December 21, 1988 bombing on preparations for what “we thought was a plan to target an Israeli plane” and that it was “clear that Jibril prepared the operation.”The comments came ahead of Saturday’s 25th anniversary of the worst terrorist attack ever carried out on British territory, and the worst terror attack on American civilians with the exception of 9/11.

20131225

No Christmas spirit in the West Bank: Israeli journalists banned from celebrationsBy Khaled Abu Toameh in The Jerusalem PostPalestinian journalists applaud the move as justification for "restrictions" imposed on Palestinian media by Israel.The Palestinian Authority said on Tuesday that it expelled Israeli journalists who came to Bethlehem to cover Christmas celebrations.The PA Ministry of Information said the decision was taken at the request of Palestinian journalists, who protested against the presence of their Israeli colleagues at Manger Square in the city.The journalists who were kicked out of Bethlehem worked for Haaretz, i-24 News, Channel 1 and Arutz Sheva, the ministry said.Palestinian journalists praised the PA police for ordering the Israelis out of the city.Read the rest of Mr. abu Toameh's article in The Jerusalem Post
Christian journalist, Cheryl Hancock, reports on Christian issues in Israel and the Palestinian territories. In this exclusive interview with Democracy Broadcasating, she claims that the Palestinian Authority persecutes and tolerates persecution of its Christians (and sympathetic Muslim) citizens under P.A. rule. She alleges that Palestinian regimes are more tyrannical than some other Arab regimes.

20131221

Al-Jazeera America Channel examined the matter on-air with Jamie Reno, Int'l Business Times and Craig Unger, author "House of Bush, House of Saud" and contributor to Vanity Fair. Former Chairman of the Senate-Select Intelligence Committee, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), who served during Pres. Bush's term, told HuffPost Live that the 28-classified pages referred to who did finance the hijackers- and that circumstantials point to Saudi Arabia.

After the 9/11 attacks, the public was told al-Qaeda acted alone, with no state sponsors.

But the White House never let it see an entire section of Congress’ investigative report on 9/11 dealing with “specific sources of foreign support” for the 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudi nationals.

It was kept secret and remains so today.

President Bush inexplicably censored 28 full pages of the 800-page report. Text isn’t just blacked-out here and there in this critical-yet-missing middle section. The pages are completely blank, except for dotted lines where an estimated 7,200 words once stood. A pair of lawmakers who recently read the redacted portion say they are “absolutely shocked” at the level of foreign state involvement in the attacks.

Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) can’t reveal the nation identified by it without violating federal law. So they’ve proposed Congress pass a resolution asking President Obama to declassify the entire 2002 report, “Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001.”

Some information already has leaked from the classified section, which is based on both CIA and FBI documents, and it points back to Saudi Arabia, a presumed ally.

The Saudis deny any role in 9/11, but the CIA in one memo reportedly found “incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials — not just wealthy Saudi hardliners, but high-level diplomats and intelligence officers employed by the kingdom — helped the hijackers both financially and logistically. The intelligence files cited in the report directly implicate the Saudi embassy in Washington and consulate in Los Angeles in the attacks, making 9/11 not just an act of terrorism, but an act of war.

"There were no controls on his movements or activities when he was returned from Kenya where he had been caught trying to join Islamic terror group."

20131217

"Iran Nuke deal quietly collapses" by Amir Taheri in The N.Y. Post Dec 16, 2013Less than a month after it was hailed as “a great diplomatic coup,” the so-called Geneva accord to halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions seems to have come unstuck.The official narrative in Tehran is that Iran signed nothing. “There is no treaty and no pact,” says Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham, “only a statement of intent.” Originally, Iran’s official media had presented the accord as a treaty (qarardad) but it now refers to a “letter of agreement” (tavafoq nameh).

Translated into plain language, the new Iranian narrative is that talks about implementing an accord that is not legally binding have collapsed and that, in the words of the head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, Ali-Akbar Salehi, there is no change in the rhythm and tempo of Iran’s nuclear project. “Our centrifuges are working full capacity,” Salehi said last Thursday.

Having claimed that he had halted Iran’s nuclear project, Secretary of State John Kerry might want to reconsider. He and his European colleagues, like many of their predecessors, may have fallen for the diplomatic version of the Three Card Monte played by the mullahs since they seized power in 1979.

The tactic of delay has several advantages for the mullahs. First, hopes of a negotiated solution make it more difficult for anyone to advocate military action to thwart Tehran’s ambitions. As long as talks are going on, “all other options”, the cliché favored by President Obama, remain off the table.

Islamic-analyst Dr. Mordechai Kedar gave us his views in this exclusive interview

Endless talks also force Iran’s adversaries are forced to sacrifice policy to process. Under the Geneva deal, for example, the US and its European partners not only set the military option aside, but also undertake not to impose additional sanctions. Instead of hiring expensive lobbyists in Washington, the mullahs can use Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and Kerry to lobby Congress on their behalf.

The mullahs have reaped other benefits from their three-card trick. The perception that the crisis is cooling down has already halted the Islamic Republic’s economic free fall. The national currency, the rial, lost 80 percent of its value over four years, but now appears to have stabilized.

Iranian-American Ben-Hur Sepehr explains the mindset of the Obama and the Islamists, who he says strive to kill Jews and Christians

The mullahs also use the prospect of normalization, especially with the United States, to divert attention from their increasingly repressive rule. While Iranians are bombarded with talk of President Hassan Rouhani’s “diplomatic miracle,” an average of 10 people are executed in Iran every day.

Here is how Khamenei’s daily mouthpiece put it Sunday: “If our centrifuges do not continue to turn, no other wheel shall turn for our dignity, independence, power and security.”

20131212

"In 1938, Chamberlain bought time to rearm. In 2013, Obama gives Iran time to go nuclear. To adapt Churchill : Never in the field of global diplomacy has so much been given away by so many for so little." -Bret Stephens "Worse than Munich" column in the Wall St. Journal

In addressing a Zionist banquet by StandWithUs in Los Angeles on Sunday, 8 December, Mr. Stephens augmented this theory, echoed by other experts. Listen to the speech audio here. Transcript for 2nd half of the speech appears here on JewTube.Info:

"Now, it will come as no surprise to anyone that I want to spend most of my time tonight talking about Iran, but I think that it is also fitting feel that I should begin by speaking about Nelson Mandela and the meaning of his legacy and its meaning for us as Americans- for us as Jews.

"In the 1980s there was a sharp debate in this country about how the United States ought best to deal with the apartheid regime in South Africa. On one side there were those who argued, this was the Regan administration, that the best way to deal with the apartheid regime was through a process of 'engagement'- critical engagement but engagement. The argument that the administration made was that sanctions will only hurt ordinary people, above all ordinary black people in South Africa, and furthermore that South Africa for all its obvious moral failings, was none the less a critical strategic partner for the United States and so that the were interests beyond morality- that there were interest of "real politik" in maintaining an alliance of sorts with that regime. On the other side of the argument there was a bi-partisan coalition that ranged from Bob Dole to Lowell Weicker, to Ted Kennedy, who thought that the best approach to the apartheid regime was also the most moral one- that is, a punitive regime(n) of economic and diplomatic sanctions that would show South Africa's white rulers that they would not be allowed to profit from their rule and that the only road to redemption was to eliminate their repressive system and let the people, all of the people, rule.

20131206

MP Kenneth Meshoe denounces Muslim and leftist enemies of Israel exploiting the term "apartheid" against Israel as inaccurate. He says that applying these claims trivializes the word apartheid, and belittles the magnitude of the racism and suffering endured by South Africans of color during apartheid era. and diluting of its true meaning.

Exactly ten years ago, on December 9, 2003, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution referring the question of the legal consequences of Israel’s construction of the security fence, calling it a wall, to the International Court of Justice. Israel’s opponents continually refer to it as a “separation barrier” for the specific purpose of evoking the image of separation between Israel and the Palestinians in a hijacking of “apartheid.”The use of the ugly term apartheid in conjunction with wrongful accusations that Israel is a criminal racist state evidenced by the building of the security fence as a wall of separation, are unfair, untrue, and are maligning to the good name of Israel and the Jewish people. . . .In memory of President Mandela, rightly viewed as a champion for equality, it is both timely and fitting to issue a call for the world to cease the inappropriate, unfair and untrue use of the term apartheid when referring to Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people. In that spirit, it should be remembered, acknowledged and appreciated that the Jewish people have historically stood against racism; have always stood for civil and individual rights; have always stood for the dignity and human rights of men, women and children from all religions, all races, all sexes, all national origins; and with a commitment to freedom, liberty and justice for all.

African Christian Democrat Party leader, MP Rev. Kenneth Meshoe, and wife Lydia, address, on TV, the passing of co-Parliamentarian, Nelson Mandela. Meshoe has been an MP since the country achieved democracy in 1994.

* - Richard D. Heideman serves as Senior Counsel of the Washington, D.C., law firm Heideman Nudelman & Kalik, PC, representing victims of terrorism and international human rights violations. He is the author of The Hague Odyssey: Israel’s Struggle for Security on the Front Lines of Terrorism and Her Battle for Justice at the United Nations

“For the first time in nearly a decade we have halted parts of Iran’s nuclear program” announced a jubilant Barack Obama after the news of the just-signed Geneva six-month interim agreement with Iran.

But the American goal for the accord was that the Iranians not “advance their program” of building a uranium nuclear bomb (and perhaps a plutonium bomb too); the apparent deal exactly permits such advancement, plus sanctions relief to Tehran worth about US$9 billion.

This wretched deal offers one occasion when comparison with Neville Chamberlain in Munich in 1938 is valid. An overeager Western government, blind to the evil cunning of the regime it so much wants to work with, appeases it with concessions that will come back to haunt it. Geneva and Nov. 24 will be remembered along with Munich and Sep. 29.

Barack Obama has made many foreign policy errors in the past five years, but this is the first to rank as a disaster.

Aaron Klein reports in WND.com "Israeli personnel in recent days were in Saudi Arabia to inspect bases that could be used as a staging ground to launch attacks against Iran, according to informed Egyptian intelligence officials.The officials said the U.S. passed strong messages to Israel and the Saudis that the Americans maintain and control radar capabilities around the skies of Iran and that no strike should be launched without the permission of the Obama administration.

The officials said Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and other Arab and Persian Gulf countries have been discussing the next steps toward possible strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites.

"President Obama’s cowardly deal with the Iranian regime – a regime dedicated to the destruction of Israel, pursuing nuclear weapons in violation of multiple United Nations resolutions, and the persecution of Christians – marks the most ignominious moment in western foreign policy in decades. The easy comparison is to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in Munich in 1938, when he signed allowed Hitler to consolidate his gains in the Sudetenland on the bare promise of no further aggression in Europe.

But in truth, the west’s appeasement of Iran is significantly worse than its appeasement of Hitler in 1938, for a variety of reasons. First, as of 1938, Hitler had not yet made clear his plans to exterminate European Jewry. He was still attempting to ship European Jews out of Europe; the Final Solution was not formally adopted until 1941. Iran has made clear its desire to wipe Israel off the map. Its current leader, supposed moderate Hassan Rouhani, has refused to acknowledge the Holocaust as historically accurate, participated in a rallycalling for Israel’s destruction, and according to Iranian press reports, stated, “The Zionist regime is a wound that has sat on the body of the Muslim world for years and needs to be removed.” Yet the Obama administration wants to pretend he is a moderate.

... Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are militantly opposed to the western sellout of its allies in the Middle East in favor of paper promises from a lying regime.

Finally, Chamberlain’s foolishness was a combination of myopia and fear. President Obama’s foolishness is a combination of malice and egotism.

Desperate to misdirect from his failing signature program, Obamacare, and eager to earn his diplomatic laurels in his second term to placate his ego, President Obama’s Iran solution is just a convenient piece of a larger cowardly foreign policy. President Obama’s foreign policy over the last six months has “won” America the diplomatic victory of leaving a weapons of mass destruction-using dictator in power in Syria while shifting Russia into the Middle Eastern driver’s seat and donating American stockpiles to al Qaeda. Obama has undercut the secular Egyptian military regime in favor of the fascistic Muslim Brotherhood. American power in the Middle East has been effectively minimized.
Prof. Mordechai Kedar: Iran's Rouhani threat? Is Obama setting-up Israel to confront Iran on nukes?

But most of all, he (Obama) has successfully vented his anti-Israel malice. How else to read an administration that has repeatedly leaked Israeli national security secrets in order to stop an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities? How else to interpret an administration that has made it safer to be an anti-Israel dictator seeking nuclear weapons than a free and prosperous democracy? How else to understand an administration that insists that Israel apologize to Turkey for confronting a terrorist flotilla aimed at helping Hamas, insists that Israel building homes in its capital city of Jerusalem is more flammable than Iran building nuclear weapons, and suggests that the Israel-Palestinian issue lies at the heart of all Middle Eastern conflict?

Israel is on its own. Obama’s deal now makes clear that if Israel hits Iran, it does so at the risk of losing American support, even should Iran retaliate against Israel militarily. More than that, Obama’s deal makes clear that America will never take action against Iran under his administration, or greenlight action from others. After all, President Obama is not a man who declares that he has been duped. Just as in Syria, Obama will assume away any problems arising from his diplomatic blundering.

20131114

Speakers at Veterans Day troop gift-wrapping event pose with Iranian-American 30-Years After leadersIDF wounded-warrior, Ronny Weinreich's Veterans Day address to Iranian-American 30-Years After American-born oleh, Ronny Weinreich (www.RonnyW.com), discusses his I.D.F. service and the price our servicemembers pay to maintain our free society. He explains Victor Frankel ("Man's Search for Meaning") notion why the Statue of Liberty ought rightfully be called the "Statue of Responsibility."Hy Arnesty of Jewish War Veterans L.A. addresses 30-Years After Hy Arnesty, Jewish War Veteran and Chairman, Cemetery and Burial Committee for the Los Angeles National Cemetery addresses 30 Years After at Sephardic Tifereth Israel Synagogue.

20131111

What price freedom? Veterans Day since WWII reflect & display defenses from Civil War though modern times - at L.A.'s Forest Lawn November, 2011 in DemoCast original video report.

Veterans from World War II (Pearl Harbor through the present) discuss the need and price of defending democracy against tyranny and repression. Veterans' Day cermony and expo held at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, Friday, 11/11/11.

20131104

Joe Lhota (R) and Bill de Blasio (D) debate NYC's future under each other

Can NYC withstand a return to Dinkins-era weakness - in an era of Obama-enabled Islamism?On the eve of the NYC mayoral election, polls show left-wing progressive Bill de Blasio with a huge lead over eading Republican Joe Lhota. CNN'S Bryan Koenig writes:

According to an NBC 4 New York/Wall Street Journal/Marist Poll released Monday morning, de Blasio has a 41-percentage point 65%-24% lead over Republican Joe Lhota among likely voters.De Blasio, the city Public Advocate, has enjoyed the commanding lead virtually since he won the crowded Democratic primary in early September, edging out once-dueling frontrunners City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and scandal-plagued former Rep. Anthony Weiner.Lhota, a businessman, deputy mayor under Republican Rudy Giuliani and former head of the New York City transit authority, has been unable to close the gap with attacks blasting de Blasio for a perceived lack of executive experience, being soft on crime and his seeming eagerness to tax the wealthy.None of the attacks have stuck with voters, leaving de Blasio poised to be the first Democrat elected mayor of the heavily liberal-leaning city in nearly a quarter century. He's run by promoting the idea of a New Yorker split in two between the haves and have-nots, while attacking Lhota for "extreme" Republican ideology.

"When Mayor Rudy Giuliani took office in 1994, there were 1.1 million people on the (welfare) dole, including many full-time college students, and (previous Mayor David Dinkins’ team assumed the total would hit 1.5 million. They saw welfare as compassion and didn’t have a clue about its corrosive effects on families and the work ethic. Giuliani knew better, and pushed for workfare and anti-fraud reforms that became part of the historic legislation President Bill Clinton signed. Mayor Bloomberg continues the approach, and now there are fewer than 400,000 city people getting welfare grants. ... Joe Lhota is right to sound the alarm about a Mayor de Blasio, who is actually far more radical than Dinkins ever was.

The attacks from the Dem goon squad are predictable, but more troubling is the silence of many people who know better. Terrified of de Blasio in City Hall, they are terrified to say so. They act as if they live in a police state, which is what they’ll deserve if they forfeit their right to pick a side.

Conditions under the liberal administrations of Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins' in the 1980's increased crime to 3 times the current rates. In 1981, muggers robbing Bernhard Goetz, a NYC electronics entrepreneur, in a subway station left him with permanent injuries to his leg and torso. NYC authorities then denied his application for a pistol license, but he purchased one in Florida. which enabled him to stave-off another gang threatening to mug him on a subway 3-years later. The pre-Giuliani crime conditions which created the "subway vigilante" came back into focus since the Friday before the election, when for selling just $30 of marijuana to a lady decoy, Mr. Goetz was arrested and jailed overnight.

Despite the small amount of pot involved, Goetz was ordered held overnight Friday due to the lone charge that stuck to him — felony gun possession — from the notorious vigilante case. See "Goetz hit on pretty cop who busted him for pot"NY Post Nov 2, 2013

In the dystopian"It's DeBlasio Time," by Daniel Greenfield ("Sultan Knish"), NYC returns to its bad old days under liberal governance- but this time with a soft-eye towards Islamic militantism under the multi-cultural, Mayor de Blasio.

"Bill de Blasio promised that he would shut down surveillance of mosques. And he kept his word. And the terrorists kept theirs. They say ten thousand people died. But a hundred thousand were affected by the gas pouring through the subway tunnels all the way down to Times Square. Some of them may die. A lot of them have scarred lungs.

President Clinton has promised that she will get those responsible. Meanwhile there are jets overhead and soldiers in the streets. They help keep down crime a little. But it's been a year now and Mayor de Blasio wishes they would leave. They're upsetting everyone in the mosque that the terrorists visited before they loaded up their canisters into backpacks and took the A train.

The NYPD could have stopped them. It would have stopped them under Giuliani and Bloomberg. But the terrorists were smarter than you. They waited for De Blasio time." Read more . . .

Business journalist Palash Ghosh lays out the parallels between candidates de Blasio and Barack Obama in far-leftist world-views and governing inexperience in this International Business Times article Bill de Blasio is Just 'Obama 2.0' Oct. 14, 2013.

... Not even (de Blasio's) lack of singular achievements, his vague promises of income equality and his links to Communists have jeopardized his quest for City Hall whatsoever. Most of the public simply does not seem to be bothered by his unqualified status (as the nation as whole felt about Obama in 2008).

It remains to be seen, of course, if de Blasio will be good for the city or not. But if he follows the path taken by his political idol, Obama, New York City may be facing some dire times ahead.

20131030

PJ Media co-founder, Roger Simon, discusses how the Obamacare problems are awakening Left and Centrist supporters of Obama Administration's governance.

Mr. Simon discusses how to bridge discussion and foster progress among people with divergent political perceptions. Questions and Answers at 27:52 mark. Recorded before the Hancock Park Patriots meeting at Busby's East, Los Angeles, Calif., Oct 27, 2013.

20131026

The Los Angeles Jazz Institute houses and maintains one of the largest jazz archives in the world. All styles and eras are represented with a special emphasis on the preservation and documentation of jazz in Southern California. The overall mission of the Jazz Institute is to preserve, promote and perpetuate the heritage of this important American art form. Autumn Festival: Oct 24-27, 2013 at L.A.X. Marriott Hotel.

Text review of Oct 2011 Festival by Jeff Krow in Audiophile Audition; Video by Scott Jenkins.Los Angeles Jazz Institute (as part of its bi-annual, 4-day, Jazz festival entitled Modern Sounds: Celebrating the West Coast Sound at Los Angeles Airport Marriott) festival director, Ken Poston, decided this festival’s focus was to be the music and arrangements of West Coast (1950s) jazz masters.“Modern Sounds” featured more concerts over the weekend than on any prior festival. The bands were led by band leaders who largely reside in the greater Los Angeles area. The festival’s premier band leaders – Gerald Wilson, Bill Holman, Terry Gibbs, Johnny Mandel, and Lanny Morgan have made Los Angeles their home base for years. Their band members, as pointed out in this review, are the cream of the crop of local talent, who make their living in LA.

(Playlist menu is 3rd button from lower right)
Watch clips from the performances and Scott Jenkins' interviews with the artists and curators there.“Modern Sounds” featured more concerts over the weekend than on any prior festival. The bands were led by band leaders who largely reside in the greater Los Angeles area. The festival’s premier band leaders – Gerald Wilson, Bill Holman, Terry Gibbs, Johnny Mandel, and Lanny Morgan have made Los Angeles their home base for years. Their band members, as pointed out in this review, are the cream of the crop of local talent, who make their living in LA.Along with panel discussions and rare films offered during the day (and a daily lunch concert by the pool), the evening’s theme concerts were dedicated to Shorty Rogers on Thursday night; Gerry Mulligan on Friday night; Jazz Goes to Hollywood (West Coast jazz used for film scores in the 1950s) on Saturday night; and an evening with jazz masters Bill Holman and Gerald Wilson’s big bands on Sunday night.Sunday afternoon and evening memories were made by a panel with 93 year old legend Gerald Wilson; followed by David Paich, from Toto fame, leading his father Marty’s arrangements from I Get a Boot Out of You. An added touch was provided Mel Torme’s son, Jamie, vocalizing on three tunes at the end of the set. From father to son…Sunday night brought an Evening with the Masters: Bill Holman and Gerald Wilson’s Big Bands. Holman’s set had arrangements of Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely,” The Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood,” as well as Holman staples, “Sweet Spot,” “Just Friends,” and “Bari Me Not,” a feature for Bob Efford, on the big horn.Wilson’s big band brought rousing versions of “Blues for the Count” (Basie), bluesy renditions showing Gerald’s fascination with Stravinsky, and Debussy, with familiar melodies blending with big band blow-out power. Gerald showed off family members, son, guitarist, Anthony, and grandson, Eric Otis, who led the band in his own new composition (from Gerald’s latest CD), “September Sky” that was simply sublime.The Los Angeles Jazz Institute’s weekend festivals are unique in that they celebrate the heyday of West Coast jazz, that being largely the decade of the 1950s into the early ’60s, when many East Coast bands and individuals came out to Los Angeles to experience the balmy LA weather and the cool relaxed scene. Many stayed for the film, TV, and commercial work that they found in Southern California. Howard Rumsey’s Jazz Lighthouse All-Stars found an adoring following, and its members, including Art Pepper, Bob Cooper, Bud Shank, Bill Perkins, and many others made the cool yet swinging sound the trademark of West Coast jazz. Most present day attendees of Poston directed weekend festivals were either residents of LA or long time devotees of the sound that emanated from LA area. They return each year from all over the country and across the pond from England and Europe.

20131015

"Yasser Arafat could not have been poisoned by polonium," Russian medical agency chief leaks, Russian biologist exposes exhumed Arafat polonium as planted post-humously for political benefit - invalidating new report of polonium on PLO-leader's remains as causing death in 2004.

In November, 2012, JewTube.Info reported that Dr. Roland Masse, radiopathologist at Paris' Percy hospital which treated the dying Palestinian leader in 2004, had decried the exhumation of Yasser Arafat to test for poloium poisoning. He declared that "the symptoms of polonium poisoning would have been “impossible to miss,” noting that Percy had tested Arafat for radiation poisoning, and revealed that the hospital specializes in the related field of radiation detection. “A lethal level of polonium simply cannot go unnoticed,” he said, speaking as workers in Ramallah on Tuesday began the process of preparing Arafat’s grave for exhumation.

Earlier today Russian News service Interfax earlier quoted FMBA (Russia's Federal Medical-Biological Agency) head Vladimir Uiba as saying he did not believe the report published in British Medical Journal, The Lancet over the weekend saying that Swiss radiation experts had found traces of polonium on Arafat's clothing.

"He could not have been poisoned by polonium," Uiba told the Russian news agency. "The Russian experts who conducted the investigation did not find traces of this substance."

Even without the FMBA, the fact is The Lancet's report of polonium on Arafat’s “tighty whiteys” is an elaborate hoax. Polonium has a half-life of 138 days, which means every four-and-a-half months (give or take a day or two) only half of the radioactive substance would remain. The amount suppossedly found on Arafat’s gown and boxers, eight years after his death translates to levels that would have also infected his doctors and wife during his last days. In other words, the polonium was added more recently than eight years ago.As Yaakov Lappin reported in this July 2012 article in The Jerusalem Post: 'Polonium found on Arafat's clothing was planted'

Israel is conducting a diplomatic campaign aimed at blunting the success of the so-called charm offensive led by Iranian President Hassan Rohani during his visit to the United Nations last month. After the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aggressive speeches, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, who is now in the United States, is focused on persuading the Americans not to allow any relaxation of the sanctions on Iran before Tehran signs a binding agreement that will slam the brakes on its nuclear program. In the background, Israel is canvassing Congress with a more ambitious goal in mind – intensifying the sanctions, a move that could lead to a confrontation with the Obama administration, which opposes doing so at this stage. . . .

Jerusalem now realizes, perhaps more than at earlier stages, the full ramifications of conducting an independent military strike on Iran against the will of the United States. A former senior defense official, who played a major role in recent years in the relations between the two countries, told Haaretz this week that an Israeli strike after an agreement is reached between Iran and the world powers and against the latter’s will, on grounds that the compromise reached was insufficient, could be likened to “an act of strategic suicide.”

In a series of press interviews, Netanyahu urges European countries to stop Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb while it’s still possible; insists Israel is not isolated.

On Thursday, Netanyahu gave interviews to several leading media outlets in the three European powers participating in the talks – France, Britain and Germany. The other members of the P5+1 are the United States, Russia and China. In Britain, he spoke to the Financial Times and the Sky television network, in France to Le Monde and the France 24 network, and in Germany to Frankfurter Allgemeine and the ARD network.

A press statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office said that in these interviews, Netanyahu urged European countries to stop Iran’s race for a nuclear bomb while it’s still possible.

“But if the sanctions are eased, the sanctions will collapse. They’ll get everything they want, and we, collectively, won’t get anything. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. The Jewish people has been around for 4,000 years. They tried to destroy us over and over, but they didn’t succeed, and we also won’t let people like the ayatollahs succeed. It’s important to stress that this isn’t just an Israeli issue; this issue also affects you.”

In an exclusive interview with France 24, Netanyahu urged France to take a tough stance on Iran and look past Prime Minister Hassan Rohani’s “smile campaign.”

“I don’t have any problem telling the truth even if it’s not popular. It so happens that I’m not isolated - Israel is not isolated,” Netanyahu said.

“Just about every country in the Arab world agrees with our position; some say so openly, some say that less openly. There’s one country who doesn’t agree with us: Syria’s Assad, of course, because he supports Iran’s regime that continues to help him in the mass murder of women and children.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly warned world leaders not to be taken in by Iran's beneficent overtures in an address to the United Nations Tuesday. His bellicose speech stood in sharp contrast to a week of conciliatory words and optimism about US-Iranian rapprochement, and has weighed on US efforts to sustain the sense of hope that pervaded the UN last week.

Mr. Netanyahu gave his now-familiar refrain that the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, is a "wolf in sheep's clothing," warned that the US is at risk of being duped by the new leadership's moderate facade, urged that sanctions not be eased, and said Israel was not convinced by the new leadership's assertion that it was not pursuing nuclear weapons, the Journal reports.

"I want there to be no confusion on this point. Israel will not allow Iran to get nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said in the address. "If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone."

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Netanyahu tells U.N. General Assembly, "He (Iranian President Rouhani) fooled the world once. Now he thinks he can fool it again. You see, Rouhani thinks he can have his yellowcake and eat it too! . . . But I will never compromise on the security of my people and of my country of the one and only Jewish state."Remarks by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu During General Debate of the 68th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, October 1, 2013"I feel deeply honored and privileged to stand here before you today representing the citizens of the State of Israel.We are an ancient people. We date back nearly 4,000 years to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We have journeyed through time, we've overcome the greatest of adversities, And we reestablished our sovereign state in our ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel.The Jewish people's odyssey through time has taught us two things: Never give up hope. Always remain vigilant. Hope charts the future. Vigilance protects it.

Today, our hope for the future is challenged by a nuclear-armed Iran that seeks our destruction. But I want you to know: that wasn't always the case. Some 2500 years ago, the great Persian King Cyrus ended the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people. He issued a famous edict in which he proclaimed the right of the Jews to return to the Land of Israel and rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. That's a Persian decree, and thus began an historic friendship between the Jews and the Persians that lasted until modern times. But in 1979, a radical regime in Tehran tried to stamp out that friendship. As it was busy crushing the Iranian people's hopes for democracy, it also led wild chants of "Death to the Jews!" Now, since that time, Presidents of Iran have come and gone. Some presidents were considered moderates, others hardliners. But they've all served that same unforgiving creed, that same unforgetting regime – that creed that is espoused and enforced by the real power in Iran, the dictator known in Iran as the Supreme Leader, first Ayatollah Khomeini and now Ayatollah Khamenei. President Rouhani, like the presidents who came before him is a loyal servant of the regime. He was one of only six candidates the regime permitted to run for office. Nearly 700 other candidates were rejected. So what made him acceptable?

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Mother of Sean Smith testifies Obama, Hilary, Biden, Panetta, and Rice, lied by knowingly scapegoating cause of attacks which killed Yanks on Americans' blaspheming of Islam. Since then, she claims, State Dept keeps her in the dark.

During the second portion of a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing about Benghazi Thursday on Capitol Hill, the majority of Democrats on the Committee left the room and refused to listen to the testimony of Patricia Smith and Charles Woods. Ms. Smith is the mother of Sean Smith, an information management officer killed in the 9/11 Benghazi attack. Charles Woods is the father of Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who was also killed.Testifying on Sept 19, 2013 about the events of Sept. 11, 2012, Sean Smith told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Obama's cabinet members failed their promises to keep her informed as info became known, saying the State Dept has endeavored to withhold information from her- keeping her in the dark. Bookworm recaps the Benghazi imbroglio (with tongue-in-cheek) on Jim Hoft's Gateway Pundit :

Apparently, Libyan fighters, coincidentally affiliated with Al Qaeda, took umbrage at a poorly made seven minute YouTube trailer promoting a movie that was never actually made about Muhammad’s life. Since Libya has no popcorn to throw at the screen, these same outraged movie critics inadvertently managed to overwhelm our under-guarded diplomatic mission in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Christopher Stevens (and perhaps torturing him before doing so), as well as U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer, Sean Smith.

The same crazed movie reviewers then shifted their attack to the nearby CIA Annex where they engaged in a several-hour-long firefight with former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Both men died at their stations.Meanwhile, back at home, some unknown person, but definitely not Barack Obama (even though he had sole authority to do so), told nearby troops to stand down. Also, after a single phone call early in the attack, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was sufficiently well informed about everything to vanish from the scene entirely. (And really, what difference at that point, did it make?) As for Barack Obama, well, he really did need his beauty sleep before an upcoming Las Vegas campaign stop.

The administration later assured us that, despite a slew of increasingly desperate emails from Ambassador Stevens about security concerns, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had absolutely no idea whatsoever that an American embassy outpost in a war-torn land riddled with al Qaeda operatives might need more than a couple of local guards at the front door. That’s why the Marines weren’t there to fire any of those “shots across the bow” that Obama suddenly loves so much.In sum, the incompetence of a Democrat administration left a U.S. outpost vulnerable to a terrorist attack; that same Democrat administration could not be bothered to rouse itself to protect Americans fighting for their lives in a tiny outpost of America on foreign soil; and the Democrat administration then tried to cover-up its gross dereliction of duty by lying consistently in the days and weeks following the attack. Other than that, of course, the Democrats have nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to events in Benghazi.

The Democrats’ sordid Benghazi history may explain a shocking tweet that Rep. Darryl Issa sent out two hours ago right before Patricia Smith, who is Sean Smith’s mother, and Charles Woods, who is Tyrone Woods’ father, were to have testified about their sons’ lives and deaths: PHOTO:@OversightDems excuse themselves from testimony of #Benghazi heroes' family members #PJNetpic.twitter.com/NP9u2I2noC

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the filmmaker falsely blamed by for 2012's terrorist attack in Benghazi, tells Breitbart News he will be released from prison Monday 23 Sept, and will finish his sentence at a half-way house facility. Nakoula is not going back to his original home, as he has privacy and safety concerns.

“I’m still okay. I’m better, but I’m worried, because I’m afraid," says Nakoula, an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian from Southern California. "Anything can happen—not from Muslim people. I’m not afraid of them, but from something else. I just don’t want to go back to jail again.”

Nakoula, who will immediately begin his probation, says he looks forward to seeing his children again and has aspirations to visit Washington, D.C. In the meantime, he plans to look for a job and apparently find stability in his life.

While serving his sentence, he wrote a book entitled Innocence; it is currently available on Amazon.